There are a variety of different drill rod magazines for delivering drill rods to a drilling position. For example, Canadian Pat. No. 944,345 issued Mar. 26, 1974 to Campbell discloses a pipe handling apparatus including a storage rack and a slide to transport the pipes or rods between the rack and the drilling position. The two arms of the rack each have clots into which the vertical pipes are positioned in side by side relationship. These arms are moveable from vertical position wherein they receive the pipes from the derrick to a horizontal storage position. Suitable stops are provided at the mouths of the slots to prevent the rods from falling out.
Canadian Pat. Nos. 1,018,147 and 1,025,844 issued Sept. 27, 1977 and Feb. 7, 1978 to Schwartz et al and Canadian Pat. No. 1,050,526 issued Mar. 13, 1979 to Jahnke et al, all disclose drill magazines of the cylinder type, i.e. similar to the rotating cylinder of a pistol. Means are provided to prevent rotation of the rods by providing specific flattened sections on the rods and a cooperating wrench like means in the magazine. These devices are relatively complicated and expensive to produce and require extra machining and weakening of the drill rods.
In many drilling operations, for example, when constructing a road or the like through rocky, mountainous terrain, the depth of drilling normally will never exceed 2 or 3 conventional drill rod lengths. In these operations the rods are manually positioned when being added or subtracted from the drill string.